Well.  I've managed to get caught up on all the outstanding application
tickets... deleted three lists, set up two, and am negotiating a couple
more.  (I also got caught up on Mike's game and have actually issued
something akin to an order to my crew. :)

Martin just recently dropped out of the editing spot due to real life
getitng in the way.  Mike's kind of overwhelmed by real life as well.
Lynn doesn't seem to have the time to do the job, either.  And Bruce...
well, we don't get many horror games, so it's hard to tell if he's doing
his job or not. :)

So it's pretty much been Mike and myself carrying the load, and I'm not
sure which of us has been doing the worse job.  It just ain't been pretty.

I'm wondering where to go from here.  Things are cleaned up, but it's so
easy to let it go.  (After awhile, deleting twenty reminder emails a day
isn't a big deal, ya know?)  The process of evaluating games isn't really
enjoyable to me, and it doesn't seem like anybody else likes it either.

After several chat-based meetings, we decided to postpone regular meetings
for awhile because all the theoretical stuff we were discussing was
pointless when the programmer wasn't keeping up with already-planned
development.  We're putting aside some of the grand community building
plans while we work on the basics... getting the new version of the
software up to snuff, and getting the whole application process smoothed
out.

It occured to me while writing a response to the guy that has four games
and wants to run a fifth that the editor has the job of doing risk
assessment.  We're trying to determine what degree of risk a particular
applicant brings with him, and that's a darn difficult job.  ("Risk" being
the likelyhood that the gamemaster will bail out before the game is
satisfactorily concluded.)

Karen and I were talking about this again yesterday.  Instead of
determining the risk factor of a particular GM, how do we *reduce* the
risk?  Even our best gamemasters have let games die... sometimes because
they got hit by a truck, sometimes for less pressing reasons.  So how do
we reduce the risk of a game dying, despite the risk the GM may present?

Karen proposed *requiring* an applicant to recruit a co-GM or some kind of
assistant who would take over the game when the main GM is unable to.  We
would greatly relax our standards concerning "will he stick with it" and
replace it with a requirement for developing a backup plan and producing a
backup GM before the game ever starts.  (I'm not sure how we'd manage the
granting of a list, advertising the game, etc. at this point.  The GM
would have to advertise the game in order to find a backup GM, but he
ought to have a list before advertising the game.  I'm wondering how to
link this into Jason's suggestion about building stuff in the Wiki before
being granted a list.)

Overall, I don't think we can sufficiently predict or eliminate risk from
an individual GM.  So maybe we need to approach the problem via redundancy
instead of trying to reduce mean time between failures.  In addition to
backup GM's, I think we need better pro-active monitoring... somebody,
some how, has to be watching what's happening in a game and do something
to keep it moving before it *starts* to stall.  Games that have stalled
seem nearly impossible to start back up.

I think we'll take this topic to the managers list at large soon, but I
wanted a bit of feedback here first.  What do you think of this idea?  How
would it affect your own decision to run games on the Phoenyx?  Would you
find it bothersome?  Do you think it could work?

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/